Adresses

Click. Listen. Look.

There are many delicious restaurants
Near where I work.
Built into houses on little streets
Named after people
Who, I assume,
Have long since died.

Some were fazendeiros
Some were generals
Esquires and boat captains
All prominent figures in their day.

Men for the most part.
Men with land
Men with money, influence or fame
(Relative to their day)
Men who could pull a chunk of green grass from the earth
And know that what they held
Belonged to them.

Then,
Like all great men,
They got old and senile
Or were shot
Or fell from a roof
Or were bit by something horrible and venomous.

But before inevitable death
A lucky few
Were rolled up to the town square
To hear
That the newly paved road
That cut like a giant plow
Through their land
Would carry their name
On a little blue plaque
For the near forever.

When the shade slid shut on their lives
The soldier
The doctor, the senator
Comforted himself with the thought
That a piece of what they were
A name
Would live on.

Then for a time
Those that knew them
Would think on the good and bad times
As they walked on
Or passed by
The new Road So-and-so
Avenida Doctor someone
Until those people too
Died their own deaths.

And with no one
who could truly remember them
These men became characters
In the occasional story.

Until even these recollections of recollections
Were no more
And their names became addresses
For the many delicious restaurants
Near where I work.

Adresses by Akil Steamship is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.